New NSA data center is cause for concern

BILL WICKERSHAM

Tuesday

May 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 28, 2013 at 1:00 PM

The Utah Data Center is the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) new data storage facility at Camp Williams near Bluffdale, Utah. The center, also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Data Center, has projected costs of as much as $2 billion by the time construction is completed in October. The facility has 1 million square feet of space and will be NSA's primary data storage resource, capable of housing more than a quadrillion gigabytes of data. Its purpose is to store massive amounts of the world's communications as they skip from outer-space satellites and travel through the world's underground and undersea cables of international, foreign and domestic networks.

Author James Bamford says, "Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cellphone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data-trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital 'pocket lit- ter.' "

Bamford notes that, in the past, "the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the U.S. and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a super-computer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words, thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it's all being done in secret."

According to an April 15 report by Reuters, the NSA categorically denies the new data center will be used to illegally eavesdrop on or monitor the emails of U. S. citizens. "Many unfounded allegations have been made about the planned activities of the Utah Data Center," the NSA said in a statement, noting, "One of the biggest misconceptions about NSA is that we are unlawfully listening in on or read emails of U.S. citizens. This is simply not true."

William Blinney, who worked 32 years for the NSA, tells a different story. Blinney headed a team in the 1990s that developed software capable of sorting through massive amounts of electronic data. It could intercept, decipher and analyze billions of emails, phone calls and Internet records, seeking information concerning terrorist plots. But Blinney's team also included sophisticated software to protect civilians from unconstitutional snooping. When NSA administrators eliminated Blinney's protective system, he retired in anger in 2001.

"It didn't take but probably a week or so after 9/11 that they decided to start spying on the U.S. domestically, on all U.S. citizens they could get," Blinney said. In 2011, NSA Director General Keith Alexander denied Blinney's claim, saying, "It was baloney."

Under current law, U.S. citizens cannot be targeted, but if they are engaged in a conversation with a foreign suspect, NSA can listen to the conversation without a warrant.

"We don't want the government to be able to have access without any basis for suspicion to read our emails, to listen in on our phone calls," said Sharon Bradford Franklin of the Constitution Project. "That's not the kind of place this country is. That's not what our Constitution is about."

Unfortunately, in the past the NSA has grossly violated the Constitution with its program of domestic spying. During the Vietnam era, the NSA was heavily engaged in spying on the domestic opposition to U.S. military policy and wartime actions. Many Americans were on the NSA watch list solely for exercising First Amendment rights in opposition to the war. Many of those targeted were well-known Americans such as folk singer Joan Baez, beloved pediatrician Benjamin Spock and civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In speaking of the NSA's collection of data on religious groups requested by the FBI, former NSA official Frank Raven said: "When J. Edgar Hoover gives you a requirement for complete surveillance of all Quakers in the United States, and when Richard Nixon is a Quaker and he's president of the United States, it gets pretty funny."

Supporters of government spying often say, "What's the big deal? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." The big deal is indiscriminate spying on citizens is illegal. Second, it discourages free speech on the part of those who wish to speak truth to power. And third, the records of such spying can ruin careers and prevent those spied upon from securing jobs for which they are applying — especially jobs with the federal government.

In my own case, I was selected from a pool of some 160 applicants for a GM 15 senior-level position with a prominent federal agency in Washington, D.C., and was told I would be hired within a few weeks. But after a routine background check, including, no doubt, reference to my 28-page FBI file, I was denied the cherished position. My FBI file, which I secured with help from former U.S. Sen. (then Congressman) Paul Simon, included information collected on the University of Missouri campus and nearby locations between May 5, 1965, and April 18, 1970. The report described my presence and activities, including anti-war protests, speaking engagements, university classes, organizing activities with the Missouri Peace Study Institute and several other public presentations — all of whose protections were guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The file also included the names of about 120 other Columbia residents, some of whom still reside here.

Let us pray the new NSA data center will not again waste the NSA's time, energy and money spying on everyday U.S. citizens exercising First Amendment rights. William Blinney says that is what the NSA is prepared to do. NSA Director General Keith Alexander says that won't happen. Whom is one to believe? I'll put my money on Blinney.

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